Italia Part 2: Pompeii (!!)

First off, I cannot believe I actually got to go to Pompeii. I went through a phase in like 5th grade where I was obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology, mummies and Pompeii. I just thought it was the coolest thing. Seeing it in real life was not disappointing. It's amazing how well preserved it is, and it's an entire city that they've excavated. It took us all day to walk around it. I just wish that they left the art where they found it instead of taking it to the Naples Museum, cause we didn't make it over there. But it was still pretty awesome.

The train ride there was...interesting. (Naples is just a little ghetto, at least the part I saw). It was a jam-packed graffiti'd train car full of a pickpocket gang of teenagers. Half of them stood at the front being obnoxious and loud while their quiet friends stood in the back unobtrusively, with all of us smashed in between. My family definitely didn't like "metro-surfing" with smelly strangers while protecting their bags for a good half hour but it just reminded me of Paris haha. Oh the things I've learned on study abroad...

But Pompeii itself was pretty amazing. I never realized how technologically advanced the Romans were. The Middle Ages really were the "dark" ages. They lost so much. The roads are a good examples. The residents of Pompeii would clean the streets every night by diverting water down them. In case pedestrians were caught outside, they had raised sidewalks and stepping stones so that they could cross without getting wet. 3 stones meant a major road, 2 a two-way street, and 1 a one-way street. The raised sidewalks also had "cat's eyes" (white stones that reflected light) imbedded so that people could see where they were going in the moonlight.

Stepping stones. The streets are paved like this all over the city

Cat's eye

They also had pedestrian-only areas, like the Forum. They placed these "buck-teeth" barriers at the end of the roads to prevent chariots from going into those places. And they even had pedestrian-only signs in Latin.

"Beaver-teeth"

Pedestrian-only sign

I think it's safe to say that they were literate, since the graffiti is in Latin too. You can tell why graffiti is an Italian word--it is everywhere! Even on their ruins.

The good thing about the ruins is that you can see how they built stuff. Like these columns-they used red bricks, and then covered them with a veneer of marble dust to make it look like marble. Genius. 

Maybe this is a nerd moment, but I thought this was SO COOL: The archaeologists made plaster casts of the roots growing in the gardens and vineyards, figured out the exact variety of plants that were there and replanted some of them. So when you walk through them, you are seeing it exactly as it was right before the eruption buried it. They even make wine out of the same vineyards the Pompeiians did.

I was really excited to see the bathhouse, and it didn't disappoint. They had separate sides for men and women, a courtyard to exercise in, hot and cold baths, and even lockers!

Roman lockers

 The roof of the bathhouse was textured so that water stuck to the walls and didn't drip down on the people. Roman architecture is amazing!!

There are also a ton of stray dogs in Pompeii. They are all used to humans, are fed, spayed and neutered and vaccinated by the city and allowed to sleep inside in the shade whenever they feel like it. Just like in ancient Pompeii (There's a famous mosaic that says Beware of the Dog in Latin). Italians sure love their dogs! (And there's a similar program for cats at one of the ruins in Rome.)

Beware of the dog mosaic

This is a Pompeii cafe. It turns out Romans didn't really like to cook for themselves so they would go out for "fast food" instead. The holes in the marble counters were for soup pots.

This is the cistern that fed water to the aqueducts all over the city. Brigit and Ethan climbed into it and ended up poking their heads out of a sewer grate haha. Don't worry, it hasn't been used for 2000 years.

This was a bakery. Does the oven look familiar? It's almost exactly like a modern pizza oven.

Here's my parents in front of the surgeon's house. They found gynecological instruments here including forceps when they excavated. My dad got super excited when we read that haha. The guy that lived here did the same exact thing my dad does, only 2000 years earlier.

 The frescos on the walls were also really cool. Because Pompeii was buried for so long, some of them are really well preserved. This one is from a country villa a little outside the city.

This table was owned by the first man to stab Julius Caesar when Brutus betrayed him. And it's just sitting in the guy's living room. Still. Crazy.

These are some of the bodies they found when excavating. They are in the vineyard furthest from Vesuvius, but couldn't make it past the wall before they were buried. It's called the Garden of the Fugitives. Pretty sad, a bunch of them are children.

The amphitheater was probably one of my favorites. It could seat 20,000 people, and unlike the Colosseum, you can still see the seats. They have started holding modern concerts there.

To sum it up.... the Romans were pretty amazing. I had a good reason to be obsessed with them as a kid haha. So if you are ever in Italy, definitely go to Pompeii. It's worth it.

Next up: Vatican City!

Italy Part 1: Roma

Alright so I'm about a week or more behind here, so my Italy blogging is going to be in parts. I'll follow what we did chronologically, hopefully I can remember everything! First up: Roma!

Wow Rome really is the "Eternal City" it's sooo old. It kept blowing my mind. I would start to forget about it, and then we would come across something like this:

They find ruins like this all the time, and if they're big enough they just cordon it off. Oh you know, a 1000 yr old-plus ruin? Yeah there's another couple down the street. And those are just the inconsequential ones that aren't labeled. When you actually go to the tourist sites?? Those are even cooler. Take the Forum-the sort of downtown for Romans, where all the important buildings (law courts, temples, etc) stood. Our word "forum" (meaning a place for debate and discussion) comes from the Roman Forum. The wall at the end is where all sorts of people would give speeches to the people and debate philosophy, law-you name it. What was really cool for me was realizing that when Peter and Paul preached in Rome, this is the most likely place they would have stood. Walking among the ruins realizing that they walked the same road that I was standing on-that was really cool. And it put into perspective how old these ruins are. They are from before and during the time of Christ.

For example: the arch below. It was built by Jewish slaves when the Romans took over Judea. All of the other takeovers were easy for Rome. As long as you agreed to pay taxes and worship the Roman gods and emperor, they would leave you to continue life as you had before they took over. But for the Jews, accepting pagan gods was not going to happen and they rebelled. So the emperor took slaves and made them build this arch celebrating their defeat. And it still stands today. (Arches like this were the inspiration for Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He was quite the imitator of the Romans and actually did a pretty good job).

Here are some more pictures of the Forum. I really had to use my imagination to try to guess how it looked when these buildings were new. It must have been quite the impressive place-these buildings were huge. It's amazing that they had such good engineering way back then.

After the Forum, we headed out to the Colosseum across the street. It's huge. To give you some perspective, in its heyday it could seat more than 60,000 people. That's bigger than the Duck Stadium! They killed an exotic animal every 5 minutes, every day-a lot of them were actually almost extinct by the time the Roman Empire fell. It requires a lot of imagination to look at it, because what remains is just the skeleton, almost all of the seats are gone, and the area floor is gone too. It's pretty incredible to stand in the middle of it. 

Next up: the Pantheon. The original one, that all of the neo-classical architecture is modeled on. IT WAS AWESOME. So cool. You come around the corner of a modern building and BAM:

It's really cool because it's the only complete Roman building still standing. The only reason it was saved is because the Catholic Church took it over and turned it into a church, so it's the longest continuously used building (ever?). There used to be stairs leading up to it but the ground has risen 25 ft since it was built, so the stairs are gone. And the inside is even cooler. The dome is the largest in Rome (the pope wanted St Peter's to beat it but Michelangelo designed it only a meter smaller just to spite him haha. He was quite the rebel.) The hole in the dome is open to the elements but the floor was designed with little holes and sloping toward the walls so that the rainwater drains naturally. 

After all that sightseeing in the heat (even though it was technically only 75, the humidity makes it feel like 90, I've never been so sticky in my life) we grabbed some gelato at the most famous gelateria in Rome. They weren't kidding, it was amazing (somehow they manage to capture the exact essence of whatever the flavor is, if you get peach it tastes exactly like a perfectly ripe peach). I got chestnut and blackberry mmmmm.

We also saw a Bernini fountain--it represents the four major rivers of the world: the Nile for Africa, the Ganges for Asia, Danube for Europe and Plate for the Americas (according to wiki haha). I wonder if it was the inspiration for the Fontaine Bartholdi in the main square in Lyon (done by the same guy that did the Statue of Liberty).

Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers

Bartholdi's fountain of the four rivers of France

Next up: Pompeii

Ok I promise I haven't forgotten about this blog...

...but I really have had no time! Here are some pictures to make up for it, I'll catch up when I can!

Pompeii

Vatican City's art collection

Raphael's portrait of Michaelangelo in the School of Athens

A famous fountain in Rome...I forget the name (starts with a T)

Florence at night

Famous bridge in Florence, all of the gold and silver shops are still there

A big craze in Italy as well as France. It's supposed to symbolize
your love, like carving your names into a tree

Cinque Terre

Venice

The End (+ Italy)

Well it's over. I'm so sad. If you are thinking about going on a study abroad all I can say is do it!!! It has been one of the best experiences of my life, and I am so glad that I had the chance to go. I made some wonderful friends and saw some pretty spectacular sights (and my french got a lot better). It was amazing! Here's the recap of the last couple days:

At first I thought Geneva was going to be kind of lame. I mean there isn't really that much to see touristy-wise, and while it's really pretty and very very clean (especially compared to Paris) it's so dang expensive!! The first night we got there everything was closed so we ended up grabbing some McDo for  dinner (something I said I'd never do, but when you are starving and there are no other options it's pretty tasty). Well a happy meal + McFlurry = 11,60 swiss francs = a little more than that in dollars. Talk about pricey! We ended up getting pretty creative, most days our meals looked like this:

• delicious paid-for (that's the important part) hotel breakfast of swiss muesli, yogurt, an apple and hot chocolate
• a piece of bread, cheese, nutella and a yogurt taken from breakfast for lunch (sometimes an apple)
• waiting until we absolutely had to buy food for dinner and buying the cheapest thing we could find, which often was McDo. Go figure.

haha the joys of being a student. But really, travelling as a student is the best. You get discounts a lot of places and you can plan your own schedule...take a nap whenever you feel like it. So besides the expensive part, Geneva ended up being really fun. We went around the whole city and saw the few sights like the flower clock, the cathedral, the jet d'eau, and went to a cool Reformation museum. But my favorite part was definitely jumping off platforms into Lake Geneva. It was soooo much fun! And a very nice break from walking and museums. It was really nice to just hang out and spend a little more time with my friends before we all left.

View from the train

An old catholic cathedral taken over by the Protestants during
the Reformation, with a neo-classical facade added

At the top of the cathedral

Group fondue night! It actually kind of made us sick because of all the
cheese, but it was fun to try it 

Swimming!

Well sorry this is short but it's late and I have to get up absurdly early tomorrow to catch a train to Pompeii (I can't believe I just typed that!). Yesterday my family flew into Geneva and I gave them a tour of the city-it was cool to know it well enough in only 3 days to act as a tour guide! Then I said goodbye to everybody and we caught a flight to Rome. Today we visited the Forum, Colosseum and Pantheon--they are pretty amazing. I'll blog more about that later but here's a teaser:

The walls in the center are the underground passages that were under the stage

The outside of the Colosseum

Pantheon! It used to have stairs in front but they are now 25 ft underground
because the city has risen so much over 2000 years. Crazy. 

Well goodnight! I hope Pompeii lives up to its reputation, I've been wanting to see it since I was probably 5. We'll see!